South Africa election watchers wait and see if ANC will be punished at the polls

Campaigning for South Africa’s upcoming elections reached a climax Sunday with mass rallies by the ruling party and one of its most potent challengers, ahead of national polls for president and parliament Wednesday.

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress, the party of Nelson Mandela that has been in power since apartheid ended 25 years ago, is expected to win the elections, but is dogged by allegations of corruption and lacklustre economic performance. The ANC’s margin of victory is expected to decline from the 62 per cent of the vote it received in the previous elections in 2014.

Addressing the ANC’s final rally Sunday, Ramaphosa promised more jobs, economic growth and a drive against corruption.

“Our young people want jobs and they want them now,” Ramaphosa, who promised to reduce the country’s unemployment rate of 27 per cent, told the rally. “We know what needs to be done to increase jobs, to grow the economy.”

He pledged to raise the equivalent of $100 billion US to invest in the economy to create jobs, especially for South Africa’s youth.

Ramaphosa was speaking to thousands of ANC supporters wearing the party’s yellow, black and green colours at Johannesburg’s Ellis Park rugby stadium, which was nearly full its 62,000 capacity.

Ramaphosa came to power last year after previous President Jacob Zuma, also of the ANC, was forced to resign amid widespread scandals.

“We’ve taken decisive steps to fight corruption across the country,” said Ramaphosa. “The era of impunity is over. We are now in an era of accountability.”

Mmusi Maimane, Democratic Alliance leader, speaks at an election rally at the Dobsonville Stadium in Soweto on Saturday. The DA hopes to make gains after years of ANC corruption headlines, but few election observers expect a change in power. (Jerome Delay/Associated Press)

However, the view the ANC tolerates corruption is expected to hurt the party in the polls.

On the other side of Johannesburg, in Soweto, the city’s largest black township, thousands gathered for a competing rally by the Economic Freedom Fighters, a populist, leftist party.

EFF expected to make gains

Firebrand leader Julius Malema said his party is the true bearer of the torch of Nelson Mandela, not the ANC.

“Mandela is resting peacefully there in Qunu [his rural burial place]. He has passed the baton to the young generation, and those young people are in the EFF,” he told thousands at a packed Orlando Stadium.

According to Malema, for 25 years black South Africans had shown loyalty to the ruling ANC, but the party’s leadership left the majority poor and without proper housing.

Malema has vowed to change the economic conditions of millions of black South Africans if they win the elections.

Leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, Julius Malema, greets supporters as he arrives at Orlando Stadium in Soweto on Sunday. Malema has said the ANC has not gone far enough to address the country’s rampant unemployment and inequality. (Themba Hadebe/Associated Press)

Malema, who has campaigned on promises to expropriate white-owned farm land without compensation and to nationalize South Africa’s mines and banks, on Sunday promised to double welfare benefits for children and the elderly.

“Under an EFF government, black people will own productive farms. The mines and the banks must be in the hands of the people,” he said.

The ANC has been unable to enact the widespread land reform it promised in the early 1990s, an issue that has contributed to the rampant inequality dating back to the 1913 Natives Land Act that in effect denied land ownership to non-whites, who made up nearly 80 per cent of the population.

Recent polls have indicated the EFF may garner about 12 per cent of the national vote, up from the six per cent in the 2014 elections.

Nobel laureate Tutu votes early

On Saturday, the biggest opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, held its final campaign rally and criticized Ramaphosa and the ANC for looting the country through corruption.

“I am angry that the very people who were elected to lead us ended up stealing from us,” DA leader Mmusi Maimane told supporters at a rally in Soweto. “And what’s most offensive is that they stole from the poor.”

Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu, 87, leaves his home after casting his special vote, near Cape Town, on Monday. (The Associated Press)

Tutu, 87, is in fragile health and took part in South Africa’s special voting for the elderly and infirm where electoral officials go to their homes or care facilities before the actual voting day.

Using a walking stick and smiling, Tutu came out of his home in Cape Town’s Milnerton area with voting officials and waved to the press who had gathered. He did not speak but blew a kiss to the press.

Tutu won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 for his work crusading against South Africa’s brutal apartheid system of racial discrimination. The upcoming elections take place 25 years after the end of apartheid.